I text someone today and wanted to type (as a joke) "Don't burgle our house" but I couldn't do it.
Burgle... is looked so odd.
Burgleburgleburgle.
So I looked the word up.
BURGLE
ˈbəːɡ(ə)l/
verb
BRITISH
enter (a building) illegally with intent to commit a crime, especially theft.
"our house in London has been burgled"
synonyms: break into, force (an) entry into, force one's way into; steal from, rob, loot, plunder, rifle, sack, ransack, pillage; informaldo
"her house was burgled last night"
Yet as I read that I realised that we are familiar with saying "He/she is a burglar." and "They burgled the property." but we rarely say to someone "Don't burgle".
Say it out loud.
It sounds odd, like baby talk.
So how did we get to have this odd word in our language anyway?
Well apparently, according to those who know, it's a recent (in comparison) addition to the language, first appearing in the 19th century UK. It is what's know as a back-formation from the word "Burglar" (that is, a word formed by removing a suffix or prefix).
"Burglar" originated from France, a formation from the word BURGIER - 'to pillage' which became the noun BURGLER.
As we Brits do, the spelling altered as it hit our shores. So we had BURGLARS but not BURGLARY as far back as the 16th century.
The name/noun was given but it had not yet been moved to its present status.
By the beginning of the 19th century a man could be a burglar, a house could be burgled, a person committed burglary but the form "To burgle" hadn't yet arrived.
No one seems to know when that changed exactly but mid 19th century 'burgle' and 'burglarise/burglarize' appeared commonplace (if that's at all ever going to be common.).
It still sounds very odd in my head so I think I'll stick to 'Rob, Robbed and Robbery' from now on. :D